First of all, some people in this thread are being very rude and condescending,
Over Zealous in particular. You might not be doing this on purpose, but you have no right to insult Baton Pass players and supporters just because, quite frankly, some of you are butthurt about losing to Baton Pass a couple of times. Let's keep the disussion informed and polite (yes I know that I'm being rude here but someone needs to say this)
What a load of rubbish. I'll get to this later. I think
Aquaslash deserves an apology from you tbh, but whatever.
Over Zealous , there's no need to be rude and condescending to other players, please stop. You also need to stop rebutting people like
Aquaslash 's posts with responses that are, to be honest, complete and utter rubbish. You ever played with a Baton Pass team? I don't mean once or twice, I mean have you played 50+ games with Baton Pass in XY OU? because I have played a lot with Baton Pass, as a joke at first, but then as an actual playstyle, and I know from experience that Baton Pass teams have lots of weaknesses and flaws that can be easily exploited - there are certain things that it just cannot handle at all. I suggest that you go away and try the strategy yourself instead of just insulting and putting down us Baton Pass players - stop the condescending tone please. You clearly have no idea of the things that threaten Baton Pass. sorry for the harsh tone, and sorry to be singling you out, but you've been posting throughout this entire thread, and I'm definitely not the first one to notice how rude you are being. Also, nobody cares about your rank and ELO rating etc, the fact that you seem to need to mention it repeatedly says a lot already. well done on breaking into the ladder, but there's no need to act superior about it.
Okay, let's get into some of the things people are mentioning as counters/checks to Baton Pass:
Quagsire: NO. These are obvious from a mile off - for example, I, as a player that has experience with Baton Pass, can see Quagsire switchins from a mile away - I have even lured them in on things that can't hurt Quagsire at all, only to pass out into Espeon on the switchin and then get rid of it with Stored Power. Interestingly, 0 SpA Sylveon can 2HKO 252 HP Quagsire without any boosts, so yeah. Quagsire may ignore all the boosts but what Unaware does NOT ignore is the Stored Power boost - so Stored Power will be at 200/240/whatever base power when Quagsire takes it in the face.
Haze Gengar/Cofagrigus/whatever: NO. I will draw on my experience as a Baton Pass player here. whether or not Haze is viable on a certain OU Pokemon is an argument for their analysis threads, not this thread, let's not get sidetracked. secondly, as a BP player, the team preview is just as important for me as it is for you. I can look out for potential Haze users and, when they come out, instead of boosting in front of them, I make the safe play and just kill them straight away, then continue the chain. BATON PASS PLAYERS AREN'T STUPID, WE HAVE WAYS TO BEAT HAZE.
Taunt/Whirlwind/Roar: NO. these moves can be seen a mile off. killing the user/passing into Espeon is easy here. This requires prediction etc. see above point. Killing Prankster users is doable
with prediction also.
Trick+whatever: NO. experienced BP players can also see this coming from a mile off. either BP into a Mega pokemon, or, Baton Pass into something that you won't use to take the Trick, then just Baton Pass. Or just set up Substitute (worst case scenario is that they're Infiltrator, in which case the part before the brackets applies).
Mold Breaker Roar/Taunt, Prankster Haze, etc: NO. Don't run these, they'll make you lose to non-BP teams. I agree with
Over Zealous here, he makes a very good point that these are stupid, don't mention these. these are so specific that they aren't viable in the slightest.
however, notice that getting past these requires
PREDICTION and
SMART PLAY. If you mispredict, you
LOSE.
WHAT KIND OF MATCH DOESN'T WORK LIKE THIS? BATON PASS REQUIRES PREDICTION AND SMART PLAY AGAINST GOOD PLAYERS.
Now let's get into some Yeses
Strong Special Attackers: YES. As has been mentioned, special defense boosts are harder for the chain to get than defense boosts. This is a huge point, so let's go into some detail.
OU Special attackers: Mega Charizard Y, Mega Gardevoir, Sylveon, Thundurus-I, Landorus-I
There is NO BP chain in existence that can take these on, to be honest. If you've ever played BP, when you see Charizard in the preview, I can promise you that you'll be praying for it to be Charizard X and not Y, as you can take X on with Acid Armor from Vaporeon, but nothing can take sun-boosted Fire Blast from Charizard Y - even fully specially defensive Sylveon is 2HKOed, and running that spread on Sylveon is rare, as you'll want to run some speed to outspeed certain things at +2, +3 etc, as well as having Defense investment (Sylveon tends to want to Calm Mind on Special Attackers). Landorus-I can kill everything in 2 hits with either Sludge Wave or Earth Power. I can tell you that I've never once won against someone that led with Landorus-I. Mega Gardevoir and Specs Sylveon are grim too - there's no way that you can outboost the damage from their Hyper Voices, as you'll be taking 80% damage with everything, + it goes through Substitute.
Strong Physical Attackers: YES. these are nasty to play against, as loads of them can boost and crush the chain before it gets going. Swords Dance also boosts at the same rate as Iron Defense, so yeah.
OU Physical attackers: Mega Pinsir, Talonflame, Bisharp, etc
Scolipede can't handle any of these at all. they can easily boost and overwhelm the chain. only Vaporeon stands a chance, and only then if you
PLAY CORRECTLY and
SMARTLY.
Okay, now let's get into the philosophical issue that people have with Baton Pass.
"It's not fun to play against, it's formulaic, I have to prepare specifically for it bla bla etc"
Please don't say this. It is
completely subjective. Let me elaborate:
DeoSharp teams: I personally find these to be boring and no fun to play against. Team Structure: Deoxys-whatever. Defiant Pokemon (Bisharp/THundurus). Spinblocker (most likely Pursuit Aegislash with Air Balloon). These teams are BORING to play against in my opinion, they are similar (please don't say that they aren't because they really REALLY are). They do work however,
WHICH IS WHY PEOPLE USE THEM. in my opinion, Spikes Stacking Offense is boring, and predictable, and follows a very common formula (this is my opinion though, I despise Hyper Offense intensely and have always preferred balance).
THIS IS MY OPINION HOWEVER, AND THESE TEAMS SHOULD NOT BE BANNED BECAUSE I (AND OTHERS) "DON'T LIKE THEM".
BW OU teams: I am not the only one who despised the shitfest that was BW OU. Rain teams everywhere. HO everywhere. Rain countertactics everywhere. Dugtrio and weather trapper Heatran being common to combat other weathers. in my opinion, weather, ESPECIALLY RAIN, was BORING to play against. Rain team setup: Ferrothorn, _____, Politoed, ____, ____, spinner (Starmie/Tentacruel). take your pick of Scizor, Dragonite, Keldeo, Terrakion, Tornadus, Thundurus-T etc for the three slots. Boring and predictable - and
EVERY SECOND TEAM WAS A RAIN TEAM IN BW OU. BATON PASS IS WAY RARER THAN 1/2 TEAMS. rain teams were, in my opinion, generic, boring, predictable,
yet people still used them because rain was good. AGAIN, MY OPINION ON 5TH GEN OU IS/WAS MY OPINION, AND EVEN THOUGH I DIDN'T LIKE IT, I NEVER CALLED FOR THESE KINDS OF TEAMS TO BE BANNED.
So are we REALLY trying to get Baton Pass banned because some people say that it is "no fun to play against", or "it's predictable", or "it's boring"?
REALLY?! that is in NO WAY a valid argument against the playstyle!! You can say that Baton Pass teams are formulaic because they need Scolipede and Espeon and Sylveon etc. Well, DeoSharp teams need a Deoxys-Forme (seriously, the sooner these things are gone from OU the better) and a Defiant user, as well as a spinblocker (Aegislash of course, to fit the HO theme). that's pretty formulaic too. same goes for rain teams as I mentioned - Politoed, Ferrothorn, [name of offensive Water Type that has Hydro Pump goes here].
HOWEVER: I do appreciate the arguments against Baton Pass - I disagree with some of them, but I can understand people's concerns. I would say that I'm a decent player, a competent player, but not an excellent player. Baton Pass can be very mindless to use (it CAN be, not it IS), but from experience, good players can still beat the strategy. If a good player using BP beats a good player using HO, what's wrong with that?
Let me talk about Stall for a minute. I've heard people say that Stall is "cheap", Stall is "boring", Stall is "shameful", Stall is "cowardly". Personally I think that good stall teams are very hard to make properly, and Stall has to be the purest of playstyles - I personally enjoy playing both with and against stall, as it is a CHALLENGE. it is a different VARIETY of playstyle. VARIETY IS GOOD FOR THE METAGAME.
Examples: GSC OU is a complete stall shitfest. I find it boring to play, even though I like Stall as a whole, because there is no VARIETY. Let me think of another example - BW Ubers is a tier I was glad to say goodbye to, as lots of the teams were a generic boring Hyper Offense build, and it was all about spikes-stacking and spinblocking.
BATON PASS IS ANOTHER KIND OF PLAYSTYLE. THE MORE KINDS OF PLAYSTYLES THERE ARE THE MORE VARIED THE OU TIER IS.
Let's get back to the issue at hand. Baton Pass can be mindless. CAN be. NOT IS. Scolipede is the issue here I believe. I personally have played with loads of different Baton Pass users, from Venomoth to non-mega Mawile, from Mega Absol to Musharna. Baton Pass without a Speed Boost user is more challenging and in my opinion more fun to play. Using Agility Zapdos/Gliscor/Jolteon, or Quiver Dance Venomoth, is great (and all you Baton Pass users reading this should try other Eeveelutions by the way, Jolteon is actually quite good). As for those people who are saying"I can't counter Baton Pass with M-Pinsir/Talonflame because of Zapdos, now I can't win as easily", poor you for playing an opponent who has a way to deal with something that would otherwise cause him problems.
"Oh no! I can't sweep my opponent's entire team with Mega Pinsir because he has Skarmory! How unfair that he made his team to cover threats to it!"
What a load of rubbish. Anyways...
What I propose (and proposed a couple of pages ago) is this:
Ban Speed Boost users in conjunction with OTHER users of Baton Pass
this allows Scolipede/Ninjask to QuickPass, which is just fine. However, it will stop quite a lot of the mindless "Scolipede Protect/Substitute Lead" kinds of Baton Pass teams, whilst still keeping Baton Pass as a fun, fair and diverse strategy, that actually requires skill and experience to use properly.
One last note on team matchup: Stall Teams are at a severe disadvantage against Cube or Gothitelle. both of these pokemon are inherently unfair to stall teams. But are they banned? no.
Sorry for the huge long bitchy post, hopefully this will clear some of the issues with certain ideas that have been put forward in this thread :)
P.S. I'll explain why I think certain other ban ideas, EG restriction of no. of BP users on one team, are all bad ideas later :)